Falling with Kobo Abe through his Kangaroo Notebook

Kobo's protagonists are real. They eat and sleep and shit mixed in with everyone--mostly unaware of the super-majority of people that are likewise unaware of them. Kobo's idea of hell is related to this idea of anonymity. In Stick, a Kobo short story, a man becomes a stick--he is relegated to the role of the observer (so common in Kobo's work--this idea of relegation, impotence, kanashibari, a man staring out from behind a one way mirror).

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Japan is a place so rife with objects, the rims of it lit up by such garish bright neon Kanji, radioactive fallout, girls day--it isn't surprising that a man such as Kobo or his protagonists are forced by means of a naturalistic inclination (at maintaining the self, a self unchanged-- pure in its unitary sufficiency; views held by conception, genetically in an unavoidably, predictably, appropriately minor proportion of the human population) to grow sick in view of cosmopolitan life--a perpetual motion machine fused with a positronic brain--fastened with today's 'refinements' pearl inspired yeast disinfection applicators, live organ transplant, particle accelerator awash in ultra-pure water, suicide machines, Oscar Awards. Indeed sickness would appear to be Kobo's temple. As far as cosmopolita is concerned, sickness is a perfectly logical rationale in forgiving a man's desire for isolation. The desire may be innate (at which point Cosmopolita decries it as unforgivable, backward 'hiding' from the 'truth' Cosmopolita claims to possess--but these offenses are of less concern to Kobo's protagonists. It's not that Kobo sees his men as gratified by non-cooperation--they're as sadly perplexed as anyone would be weathering a winter storm in only their socks as they observe a dinner party taking place through the frosty windows of a warm cottage (and all the jovial participants are staring right at you).

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There is a point which needs to be taken up with feminist theory here--The male escape fantasy. Traditionally this contains the image of a married man--the man who by virtue of having conquered that woman, having seen the top of the mountain, has no where to go but back down, to see what lies beyond women. It is a conceit of feminism to presume woman (the symbol) holds such distinct, shall I say King-making power over the whole of manhood. It is an aggressive blubbering attempt at claiming ownership of not only men's desire on average to copulate and create progeny, but also by association their aim at creating those things which lie beyond corporeal nesthood of women. Kobo's men have a male escape necessity. Their situations away from the nest, observing the nest, observing those who oblige the nest with nestmaking prowess, noting the repetition, but crucially noting the separation--the impossibility of reattainment, consecration--flicked painfully by a callous nurse the non-understanding penis engorged by an erection plunged at the urethra, and bleeding, through a plastic catheter. This is Kobo's man.

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Circular on rail traps. The environments---The topic for the next idea. Stay tuned.